Good morning. Another miserable week for Rishi Sunak began with his appearance at the Covid inquiry yesterday, where he admitted that he had not discussed his flagship “eat out to help out” scheme in advance with scientific advisers. Today, it gets worse: he is facing a vote on his bill attempting to revive the government’s Rwanda removals policy, in which MPs on both sides of his party have threatened to rebel. He will start the morning with a breakfast meeting to woo rightwing MPs who have made their contempt for the deal clear. And even if he wins, his problems aren’t going away any time soon.
At least Sunak can console himself that it isn’t only his fault. The rebels on either side of him are evidence of the Conservative party’s deep and abiding identity crisis: is it the vessel of the populist hard right that came to the fore after Boris Johnson’s 2019 victory, or can the patrician Tories who once ruled the roost wrest it back towards the centre?
